


Mended

by GoThruTheStars



Series: No Better Love [1]
Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, M/M, Not really though, SO SORRY, agnst, author has feels, its sad, no, not really - Freeform, oh this hurts, theres sorta of a, um
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-15
Updated: 2018-10-15
Packaged: 2019-08-02 07:56:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16301108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoThruTheStars/pseuds/GoThruTheStars
Summary: When they met, Sid didn’t see this coming. He didn’t see anything coming, to be honest.





	Mended

**Author's Note:**

> Will I ever write a story not with song lyrics? Will it ever be not angst? The world may never know!

 

_ Just thinking about us I've come undone _

_ Looking back I don't know who lost or won _

 

_ It’s been a little while since we have ended _

_ But we haven’t mended _

 

_ I'm not laying blame, I'm not keeping score _

_ I just wish I could find who I was before _

 

_ What am I supposed to do _

_ When most of me _

_ Still belongs to you _

  
  


When they met, Sid didn’t see this coming. He didn’t see anything coming, to be honest.

 

He just saw a kid, saw someone like himself. Lost and alone while being told they don’t have a right to those feelings. They’re hockey players, and they’re young, and the world wants everything from them.

 

It shouldn’t have been hard, but Geno - Geno lit Sid up inside. It took a few months, at first, and then when they both started to grow out of their shells, started to take steps together, it seemed like that was it. They were going to be best friends, and they were going to win, and they would lose and laugh and cry, and do it all together.

 

They were going to do it all. Together. 

 

Were.

 

He can’t even think about it now, what they were back then. Back when he had them all, when it wasn’t Sid and the Penguins, when it was Sid and Geno and Duper and Flower and Tanger, and Kuni and-

 

It felt like, even when he knew he could lose them, that he couldn’t  _ really. _ Even when he started to see them go, it was still okay, because G was there, and he always reminded Sid - they’re still your friends, still your family. 

 

He believed him. He believed him, when he kissed Sid's cheek and told him he was loved, and he believed him, when they lay in bed at night, and Geno told him it would be okay.

 

Sid believed him, when he said they’d last forever.

 

He can’t think about it, because his heart is so broken, so- so  _ destroyed- _

 

It’s been a while, since they called it. It was a 'they', not a Sid or a Geno. It was both of them, screaming, both of them not talking when they needed to be, both of them creating noise when there should have silence, and silence where there should have been words. 

 

It was both of them, wrapped up in their own heads at the end of the season. Not supporting each other, not helping, not listening. Not enough.

 

Sid was never - and will never be - enough.

 

He wishes, more than anything, that he could be. That he could show the universe, (show the world, show his family, show  _ Geno)  _ that he was. That he met the standards set for him. That wasn’t just good, he was great, he was perfect, he was, he was, he was-

 

_ “I love you, Sid.” _

 

_ “I love you, Zhenya.” _

 

For those two years, he felt like it. He actually felt like - like he was there. He figured it out. Him and Geno, they fought the world, and they won. Two cups, and he thought, so naively that they could do it. They were so happy,  _ so  _ damn happy, Sidney thought he’d explode with it.

 

He sits on his bed sometimes, big and cold and empty, just like his stupid house, that’s so stupidly far from Geno’s, and he stares at the ring sometimes. It’s simple, and its silver, and its nothing special, because he knows G wouldn’t have worn it if it was too flashy, but it’s-

 

It’s what they could’ve had. It’s everything that happened, and it’s all the fights, and it’s all the ‘ _ I’m sorry _ ’s and the ‘ _ I can’t lose you’ _ s and the whispered declarations of love, and it’s all of it, and it’s-

 

It’s five months of not talking, it’s six months of deafening silences, it’s seven months of uncertainty, and it’s a two-sentence conversation that broke Sidney. 

 

It what should have happened. It’s what might’ve happened, if Sidney wasn’t a coward. It’s what might’ve happened, if they just talked. If they just said it.

 

The season doesn’t change anything. If anything, it makes it all so much worse.

 

All of their mistakes are out there, lying in the space between the captain and his A. It’s there next to Kuni’s old stall, and it’s there in Flowers seat on the plane, and it’s there in the many days where Tanger isn’t pranked by Duper, and it’s  _ there _ , it’s there in the shards of Sidney’s heart. 

 

It’s there, in the silence. The dusty remains of their love are everywhere, sitting on display.

 

It takes no genius to figure out something went wrong. Even the guys who didn’t know, they look between him and Geno, and there’s a question. It’s obvious, and it’s tense, and it hurts, it hurts all the time. 

 

It’s different, sure, because sometimes he sees Geno laughing, and he feels like he got checked by Ovi, the way the pain lances up his ribs and his ears ring. He doesn’t understand it, how G can just...walk away, and still be Geno. He’s not saying it’s Geno who walked away - it was Sidney who said the first words, and it was Geno who simply agreed. There’s no blame here, it’s just-

 

-just that Geno is okay, and he’s whole, and he’s still moving, still growing and working and playing, and Sidney isn’t.

 

Sidney is still sitting in his big empty house, crying into a bottle of alcohol and spinning a ring full of meaningless promises around on his finger.

 

Part of him, (that fighter that brought him to where he is, that stubborn piece of him that wouldn’t let Geno run after every fight, that part of him that hasn’t been there since the start of playoffs last year), wants to move on. It wants him to fight again, to focus on hockey, to throw himself into the game and work so hard and so much that he brings the pens another cup, even if he has to drag them kicking and screaming to do it.

 

It wants him to find comfort in determination, and it wants the only pain in his heart to be from losses again.

 

It wants him to be happy again, like he was before. And, well, sid wants that too, but the thing is-

 

He was happy before, because of someone else. 

 

He’s heard people talk about love a lot - and some people, he’s heard tell him that the other person shouldn’t complete you - they should make you better. Sidney had always thought that was a way of loving, that was more protective of your own heart than it was anything else. 

 

Maybe, he ought to have listened. Because Geno didn’t just make Sidney better - he made him feel like he was real. Like he, Sidney Crosby, was important, for things other than hockey. 

 

Now, he can’t even play hockey right, if he listens to his critics. 

 

Sometimes, he sees Geno looking at the ground, instead of him, and he feels his legs get unsteady, because he caused that. Sometimes, he has what feels like the worst period of his life, and he sits in the locker room, and his throat gets painfully tight and his eyes sting with tears that he doesn’t let fall, because he knows that where he once used to go home to Geno’s warm arms around him, (where he once used to get to look forward to it, to a night of closeness, to reassurances and promises, to  _ love) _ , instead he gets nothing but his own pain and the shadows of his loneliness.

 

He plays hockey, and he goes home, and he walks around in agony, and people notice, but don’t care, and he does it again, and again, and again.

 

He does it, until he can’t anymore, because it’s been seven months now, and Sidney can barely get himself to get out of bed anymore, never mind be a semi-decent Captain.

 

It says something, that he’s thought about giving up the C, because he can’t see a way out of this, and his team deserves the best.

 

He doesn’t think it’s been living. Whatever he’s been doing, it really can’t be called that, because it’s been more akin to dragging his body across the ground, clawing his way through the days because he’s got nothing in him to do anything but that. So if he can’t call it living, then there really isn’t a point where he decides to  _ stop _ .

 

He just- skips optional skate. And maybe he stays in bed all day, and he ignores the calls from Flower, and he doesn’t text Duper, and he doesn’t comment on Tanger’s picture of Alex. He feels progressively worse, and he gets up only to close his blackout curtains, and to go to the bathroom with the lights off, and then he’s back in bed, and he sleeps, and sleeps, and sleeps, while his phone rings and rings and rings.

 

He misses practice without having a reasonable injury, for the first time in his entire career in the NHL. He knows, because it’s been so long since he’s left his cold, dark, empty room, and his phone starts buzzing more and more, until it stops completely when it finally dies.

 

He holds the ring, and he brushes his palm over it, skimming over the metal. It isn’t shiny anymore, he’s held it so much. 

 

It’s that, out of everything, that makes him start.

 

He remembers looking at, a year ago when he bought it, and being so excited for when it dulled from Geno’s hands brushing over it, wearing it, showing it off, never wanting to take it off to clean it. 

 

He squeezes it in his palm so tight it leaves an imprint, and his throat hurts (tight and sore and throbbing, trying to keep the pain at bay) and he has to squeeze his eyes shut and gasp, shaky inhales and stuttering exhales, and it works, it works right until-

 

_ “Ox  _ _ моя любовь.” _ The words are soft, just like the touch is, the gentle hand in his hair, the thumb tracing under his eyes, brushing away the one tear that’s managed to escape.

 

It’s too much, and it’s not enough, and Sidney isn’t even sure it’s real, but whatever part of him that was holding it all back, it too, breaks, and he cries. 

 

He sobs, and Geno’s there, gathering him in his arms, crushing Sidney to his chest, “ _ Это нормально _ , Sid, it’s alright,  _ Я люблю тебя _ , so sorry, so sorry Sid.” 

 

“Please.” He cries, trembling in Geno’s arms. “Please just come back, I’ll do anything, please, please I can’t do this anymore, I- I’m  _ sorry _ Zhenya.” 

 

Geno shushes him, and Sidney doesn’t understand why they’re  _ here _ when they could’ve been so many other things, but he finds one of Geno's hands, and he opens his palm, and he knows the second Geno understands what the object is, because his whole body stiffens, and then there’s the sensation of water on his hair, and Sidney knows.

 

He didn’t see this, when he met Geno. (Didn’t see them together in bed, holding each other for the first time in almost a year, shaking because they’ve found each other again, crying because of the promise of the end of the pain).

 

And now, he doesn’t see a kid. 

 

He sees a man, sees someone like himself. Lost and alone while being told they don’t have a right to those feelings. He sees someone like him, and wants, beyond anything else, to take that pain away. 

 

_ “Be okay, Sid.” _

 

_ “With you, G, I always am.” _

**Author's Note:**

> I might write a sequel with Geno's POV, lemme know if you liked it.


End file.
